An annual startup pitch competition at Carnegie Mellon University returns for an in-person audience for the first time in several years on Saturday, and organizers are calling on all Pittsburgh innovators to attend the free event.
The CMU Venture Challenge Demo Day, organized by the CMU Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, takes place on April 8 at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship located in the Tepper Quad building.
According to Roshni Surpur, president of the CMU Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club, over 380 people have already signed up to attend the day-long event.
She said she has been working with Adam Paulisick, one of the organizers for the xChangePgh series of innovation community events, to ensure that it's not just CMU students who make up the attendance rolls. Surpur said the event promises to be one that's worthwhile for many folks in Pittsburgh's innovation community who could stand to benefit from networking with startups and investors from across the country.
"We want to open up that new generation of talent to the larger community in a way that both CMU students can benefit by being a part of the Pittsburgh community and getting out of that CMU bubble while investors in the community can reach out to this young talent and this young audience that is trying to innovate but might not know what direction that they have but that older investors are able to help with," Surpur said. "One of the things I love about entrepreneurship, it reminds us that you're bigger than something than just yourself. You're part of a larger community, and at the end of the day, we're very social, and everything I'm doing is to uplift the people around me and not uplift myself."
The event kicks off at 12 p.m. with a fireside chat featuring Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. and founder of the Khosla Ventures investment firm.
Pitches from 10 startups, led by undergraduate students, will then take place until 5:30 p.m.
Then, another fireside chat with Lucy Guo, co-founder of Scale AI and Backend Capital, will take place before a closing ceremony is held to announce the winners. The top three finalists will each receive cash prizes and $5,000 in Amazon Web Service credits as well as office hours with the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator program and mentorship from Freshworks, a business software firm.
The event will conclude with a networking opportunity for all attendees.
"This is going to be a space where there's that drive, that energy that makes you want to build something and impact the world," Surpur said. "It's just that sense of motivation that you get when you're surrounded by like-minded people, and I'm very excited to put all of those people in one room."
